You know what we need right now? A trip to the mall, not even to buy, but to observe and learn. See how people engage with each other. Observe how they coordinate their movements in the public spaces without direction. Appreciate the kindness that salespeople show for customers whom they do not know, and how this ethos of mannerly sociability extends out to the hallways and the entire space. Consider the complexities of production that make all of this available to you without mandates or impositions.
Or perhaps we need a walk in the park while playing Pokemon GO, meeting new people and laughing with them. It’s fascinating how the mobile app creates a digital reality that sits atop the real one, and how we can all experience this technological marvel together. Strangers are given an excuse to speak and get to know each other.
Really, just any visit to an awesome commercial center, teeming with life and full of human diversity, would be palliative. Or maybe it is a visit to a superstore to observe the products, the service, energy, the benevolence, of the commercial space. We can meet people, encounter their humanity, revel in the beauty and bounty of human life. Or it could be your local watering hole with its diverse cast of characters and complicated lives that elude political characterization.
Also thrilling is to attend a concert and see how the arts and music can serve as a soundtrack to the building of community feeling. With public performance, there are no immigration restrictions to the category of “fan.” We can sing, clap, and dance to shared experience, and everyone is invited in.
And while in these places, we need to reflect on the meaning of the existence of these spaces and what they reveal about ourselves and our communities. Here you will see something wonderful, invigorating, thrilling, magical: human beings, with all our imperfections and foibles, can get along. We can provide value to each other and find value in each other. We can cooperate to our mutual betterment.
These spaces are all around us. And here politics don’t exist, mercifully. No one will scream at you or threaten you for failing to back the right candidate or for holding the wrong ideology or being part of the wrong demographic or religion. Here we can rediscover the humanity in us all and the universal longing for free and flourishing lives.
In this extremely strange election year, escaping the roiling antagonism and duplicity of politics, and finding instead the evidence all around us that we can get along, however imperfectly, might actually be essential for a healthy outlook on life.
Politics Makes a Mess of Our Minds
Some startling new evidence has emerged about the effect of this year’s election on the psychological well being of the US population. The American Psychological Association has released an early report on its annual survey and found that more than half the population reports being seriously stressed, anxious, alarmed, depressed, and even frightened by the election. Essentially, the constant coverage, dominating the news every minute of every day, is freaking people out.
I totally get this. I’ve felt it – some nagging sense that things are not quite right, that the lights in the room are dimming, that life is not quite as hopeful and wonderful as it usually is.
I’ve regarded this as my own fault; for the first time I’ve followed this election very closely. I made this awful bed and now I’m lying in it. The message that politics beats into our heads hourly is that your neighbor might be your enemy, and that the realization of your values requires the crushing of someone else’s.
That’s a terrible model of human engagement to accept as the only reality. It is demoralizing, and I’ve felt it this year more than ever. But everyone I know says the same thing, even those who are trying their best to tune it out. Now we have evidence that vast numbers are affected. It’s one thing for politics to mess up the world around us, but it’s a real tragedy if we let politics mess up our minds, spirits, and lives.
Why Is this Happening?
Carl von Clausewitz is believed to have said that “war is merely the continuation of policy by other means.” It may be more accurate to say that politics is the continuation of warfare by other means. There are winners who get the power and what comes with it, and losers who forfeit power and pay. This isn’t like business competition in which my win only affects your future revenue stream. In politics, my win comes at your expense through the violence of state action. That’s what gives this moment prescience.
We all have some sense, whether true or not, that so much is at stake. Then you look at the epic unpopularity of the candidates and it is truly amazing. If the Republican weren’t running, the Democrat would be the most despised candidate for the presidency in American history. Then you add to that the beyond-belief loathing of the GOP candidate and you really do gain a sense of the seeming hopelessness of it all.
And talk about divisive! Look at these angry rallies, the screaming for destruction of the enemy. And this has spilled over to social media. We are all losing friends. People we used to hang out with we no longer speak to. Whole population groups are feeling afraid of what’s coming – and this is true of everyone no matter their race, religion, or gender. Predictions of the coming doom are everywhere around us.
And there is a sense in which they are all correct. As Bastiat explained, the state turns people against each other, shattering the harmony of interests that normally characterizes human life. Watching the state’s political gears in motion is an ongoing exhibition of low-grade warfare that seems to demand that we fight or take cover. The shrillest voices, the meanest temperaments, and the most amoral plotters are the ones who dominate, while virtues such as wisdom, charity, and justice are blotted out.
Is it any wonder that this is not exactly uplifting of the human spirit?
The Lessons
What if the whole of life worked like the political sector? It would be unrelenting misery, with no escape, ever. As it is, this is not the case. We should be thankful for it, and remember that the thing that makes life wonderful, beautiful, and loving is not crushing your enemy with a political weapon but rather the gains that come from turning would-be enemies into friends in an environment of freedom.
In these environments, we have the opportunity to discover a different model of human engagement. By letting people choose, innovate, associate, and cooperate – to do anything peaceful – we discover proof that human beings can self-organize. We can get along. We can build wealth. We can create institutions that reward goodness, charity, justice, and decency. We can serve ourselves and others at the same time.
A slogan passed around some years ago in academic circles was that “the personal is the political.” That sounds like hell on earth. The slogan should be flipped and serve as a warning to all of us: whatever you politicize will eventually invade your personal life. We should not allow this to happen. The less that life is mediated by political institutions, the more the spontaneous and value-creating impulses in our nature come to the fore.
I’m convinced that we all want this. We don’t really want to live amidst anger or revel in the destruction of our enemies. Hate is not a sustainable frame of mind. We intuitively understand that when we use politics to hurt our neighbor, we are also hurting ourselves. We are being dragged down instead of being lifted up.
We owe the good life to the remaining liberties we have to discover the possibility of genuine human community all around us. Without liberty, the world would sink into a pit of mutual recrimination and violence. Human beings thrive in the absence of politicization. Discovering that great truth is one way to avoid the mire into which the politics of our time seeks to plunge us.
-
No comments on Why politics and politicians suck
-
The number one song today in 1969:
Britain’s number one single today in 1979 probably would have gotten no American notice had it not been for the beginning of MTV a year later:
The number one album today in 1986 was Huey Lewis and the News’ “Fore”:
The City of Los Angeles declared today in 1990 “Rocky Horror Picture Show Day” in honor of the movie’s 15th anniversary, so …
-
The group in the headline includes neither myself nor Kimberley Strassel, who writes:
If average voters turned on the TV for five minutes this week, chances are they know that Donald Trump made lewd remarks a decade ago and now stands accused of groping women.
But even if average voters had the TV on 24/7, they still probably haven’t heard the news about Hillary Clinton: That the nation now has proof of pretty much everything she has been accused of.
It comes from hacked emails dumped by WikiLeaks, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, and accounts from FBI insiders. The media has almost uniformly ignored the flurry of bombshells, preferring to devote its front pages to the Trump story. So let’s review what amounts to a devastating case against a Clinton presidency.
Start with a June 2015 email to Clinton staffers from Erika Rottenberg, the former general counsel of LinkedIn. Ms. Rottenberg wrote that none of the attorneys in her circle of friends “can understand how it was viewed as ok/secure/appropriate to use a private server for secure documents AND why further Hillary took it upon herself to review them and delete documents.” She added: “It smacks of acting above the law and it smacks of the type of thing I’ve either gotten discovery sanctions for, fired people for, etc.” …
A few months later, in a September 2015 email, a Clinton confidante fretted that Mrs. Clinton was too bullheaded to acknowledge she’d done wrong. “Everyone wants her to apologize,” wrote Neera Tanden, president of the liberal Center for American Progress. “And she should. Apologies are like her Achilles’ heel.”
Clinton staffers debated how to evade a congressional subpoena of Mrs. Clinton’s emails—three weeks before a technician deleted them. The campaign later employed a focus group to see if it could fool Americans into thinking the email scandal was part of the Benghazi investigation (they are separate) and lay it all off as a Republican plot.
A senior FBI official involved with the Clinton investigation told Fox News this week that the “vast majority” of career agents and prosecutors working the case “felt she should be prosecuted” and that giving her a pass was “a top-down decision.”
The Obama administration—the federal government, supported by tax dollars—was working as an extension of the Clinton campaign. The State Department coordinated with her staff in responding to the email scandal, and the Justice Department kept her team informed about developments in the court case.
Worse, Mrs. Clinton’s State Department, as documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show, took special care of donors to the Clinton Foundation. In a series of 2010 emails, a senior aide to Mrs. Clinton asked a foundation official to let her know which groups offering assistance with the Haitian earthquake relief were “FOB” (Friends of Bill) or “WJC VIPs” (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs). Those who made the cut appear to have been teed up for contracts. Those who weren’t? Routed to a standard government website.
The leaks show that the foundation was indeed the nexus of influence and money. The head of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Ira Magaziner, suggested in a 2011 email that Bill Clinton call Sheikh Mohammed of Saudi Arabia to thank him for offering the use of a plane. In response, a top Clinton Foundation official wrote: “Unless Sheikh Mo has sent us a $6 million check, this sounds crazy to do.”
The entire progressive apparatus—the Clinton campaign and boosters at the Center for American Progress—appears to view voters as stupid and tiresome, segregated into groups that must either be cajoled into support or demeaned into silence. We read that Republicans are attracted to Catholicism’s “severely backwards gender relations” and only join the faith to “sound sophisticated”; that Democratic leaders such as Bill Richardson are “needy Latinos”; that Bernie Sanders supporters are “self-righteous”; that the only people who watch Miss America “are from the confederacy”; and that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is “a terrorist.”
The leaks also show that the press is in Mrs. Clinton’s pocket. Donna Brazile, a former Clinton staffer and a TV pundit, sent the exact wording of a coming CNN town hall question to the campaign in advance of the event. Other media allowed the Clinton camp to veto which quotes they used from interviews, worked to maximize her press events and offered campaign advice.
Mrs. Clinton has been exposed to have no core, to be someone who constantly changes her position to maximize political gain. Leaked speeches prove that she has two positions (public and private) on banks; two positions on the wealthy; two positions on borders; two positions on energy. Her team had endless discussions about what positions she should adopt to appease “the Red Army”—i.e. “the base of the Democratic Party.”
Voters might not know any of this, because while both presidential candidates have plenty to answer for, the press has focused solely on taking out Mr. Trump. And the press is doing a diligent job of it.
-
NBC News went to Brookfield Thursday:
House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday adamantly ignored the controversy dogging Republican nominee Donald Trump and insisted his party is “running on ideas” in a speech that laid out the GOP policy agenda.
“Not much going on these days, so there is not much to talk about,” Ryan joked at the top of his address to the Waukesha County Business Alliance luncheon.
“We actually are running on ideas in this election,” he added. “You would never know it would you? Guess what? There is an actual choice between two different schools of thought, two different philosophies, two different agendas, before us in this country, but you wouldn’t know it if you turn on the computer or the TV would you?”
Ryan told the crowd he would “take a break from all the mud slinging and the mess that is out there on TV and introduce you to some ideas and some solutions,” and in his speech, Ryan did just that, laying out the bundle of tax, business and regulation reforms that make up the House GOP’s “Better Way” policy agenda.
Though the program for the event stated Ryan would take questions from the crowd, he left without doing so, after speaking for just 20 minutes.
It was a stark contrast with the speech the Republican nominee was giving at the same time, hundreds of miles away in Florida. In front of a crowd of thousands, Trump railed on “the corrupt establishment” and attacked the women that have accused him of assault, continuing the freewheeling, burn-it-down style and message he’s unleashed on the trail over the past week.
But Ryan’s speech Thursday meshed with his announcement on a Monday conference call with House Republicans that he was all but abandoning Trump to focus exclusively on electing downballot Republicans. His decision came in the wake of the release of a taped 2005 conversation in which Trump bragged about groping women against their will, comments that sparked an exodus of support from prominent Republicans and calls for the GOP nominee to drop out.
The Speaker is still voting for Trump, but he told lawmakers he wouldn’t campaign with or defend Trump for the rest of the election. And on Thursday, it was clear his plan is to run his own campaign as the GOP standard-bearer, to offer a positive, issue-oriented vision of the Republican Party for voters turned off by the vitriol at the top of the ticket.
“This is the agenda we are running on in Congress, but you wouldn’t know about it would ya?” Ryan acknowledged.
He went on to instruct the crowd to “forget about the buzz of the day and forget about the, what twitter storm is going on in the last 20 minutes, last 5 minutes…this is who we are, this is what we believe, these are taking our principles — the ones that built this country — applying them to the problems of the day, offer solutions, win an election, get it done, save this country, go Packers!”
What was Trump, the alleged presidential choice of Republicans, doing? Attacking Ryan and Republicans.
-
The number one song today in 1960:
The number one song today in 1964:
The number one song today in 1970:
-
-
The number one single today in 1964:
The number one single today in 1966:
Today in 1971, Rick Nelson was booed at Madison Square Garden in New York when he dared to sing new material at a concert. That prompted him to write …
If I told you the number one British album today in 1983 was “Genesis,” I would have given you the artist and the title:
-
The first Corvette I remember was the down-the-street neighbor’s 1970 dark-green coupe with the base 350 V-8 and automatic.
NOTE: Not the actual first Corvette I remember seeing. The first Corvette I drove looked a lot like it, except it was a 1969, and it had a tan interior instead of a green interior. Oh, and it had a 427 V-8 with three carburetors, running on racing gas, and M-22 “rock-crusher” four-speed. It did not have power steering or brakes.
NOTE: Not the actual Corvette I drove. I think. It was a cloudy, not very warm summer day, which was a good time to notice how much heat the V-8 produced. I noticed that after I noticed how much noise the V-8 produced. To paraphrase Robert Duvall’s cavalry colonel from “Apocalypse Now,” the smell of unburned hydrocarbons from gasoline-powered V-8s is the smell of … victory.
The 427 three-carb V-8 was rated at 435 gross horsepower. “Gross” means horsepower before engine-driven accessories; since 1971 engines have been measured in “net” horsepower, after the drag from such accessories as the fan, alternator, power steering, etc. Of course, it didn’t have power steering, so that was one major drag missing. I think the engine wasn’t originally rated for only racing gas, so someone may have tweaked it to exceed the rating, which may have been underreprted anyway because insurance companies were starting to hyperventilate about horsepower.
The owner drove it around for a few minutes, and then punched the loud pedal, and the world moved by at increasing speeds. Things don’t go by in a blur at such speeds; they just go by really, really fast. Based on what the owner told me the speedometer said (even if the speedometer was 10 mph off at those speeds) … put it this way: It was the second fastest I’ve been in a motor vehicle, the first being in a NASCAR racing truck on a Road America straightaway.
Then I got to drive. Of course, I killed it the first two (or so) times I tried to take off, not having familiarity with the ballet of clutch pedal and accelerator pedal. (Brakes weren’t even an issue yet.) Generally the first manual-transmission car one drives is probably not one whose transmission is known as the “rock-crusher.” As someone whose arm strength has never been confused for Popeye’s, driving a car without power steering but with most of its weight atop the front wheels (thanks to the iron-block iron-head big-block V-8). You discover that steering isn’t so bad at speed, but low-speed turns are brutal, at least when the most strenuous thing you do with your arms is type or pick up a trumpet. The brakes weren’t really an issue given all the marching I had done and the fact I didn’t drive it very fast.
I managed to neither wreck nor, I think, harm the Vette in my few minutes of driving on city streets. (If a car is built for drag racing, it should be able to stand a few minutes at the hands of a ham-handed novice driver, right?)
For as small a car as the Corvette is, that was a beast to drive. As with all cars of the era, it had little in the way of safety features beyond collapsible steering column (as if hitting something at three-digit speeds wouldn’t kill you anyway) and seat belts. It had an AM/FM radio, and that was about it. The seats didn’t adjust other than sliding up and back. Compared with today’s Corvettes (or even cars with much less performance), it didn’t have much in tires — bias-ply 60-series tires with 15-inch eight-inch-wide wheels. Those Corvettes didn’t even have rack-and-pinion steering, a feature that wasn’t added until the C4 was designed.
(Side note: A few months later I was in Las Vegas with the UW Band. The first night we were there I walked up to a slot machine whose jackpot, five 7s, was a new Ferrari. I put in some money, and on my third attempt I saw four 7s and … not a 7. The interesting question to ponder is what a 21-year-old college student living in the Snowbelt would have done with a Ferrari. Maybe trade it for the Corvette?)
Several years later, I test-drove a 1976 coupe — red, of course — with the L-82 V-8 and four-speed. That V-8, in the depths of the Smog Era, generated all of 220 horsepower. The Vette was less than $10,000, but it wasn’t affordable at that time, in part because adding another car payment seemed a bad idea.
NOTE: Not necessarily the Corvette I test-drove. The funny thing about driving that Corvette was that it gave more of a feel of driving a luge, nearly lying down with my feet way out in front, than the previous Corvette I drove. The other funny thing is that performance-wise there are few worse Corvettes, but they sold very well, perhaps because there was little else for high-speed vehicle choice in those days — basically only the Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am, with its larger but weaker 400 V-8.
A few years after that I drove a coworker’s 1973 Corvette before he sold it. This too had a four-speed, and it was augmented further by fantastic red-over-gold paint.
NOTE: Not necessarily the same Corvette I drove. Again, I didn’t drive it very fast, though I was about to before, as I steered onto a straight road, I saw a police car in front of me. (This was the same road where I had previously test-driven a 1994 BMW 540i with a V-8 and six-speed. It was so smooth that I didn’t realize I was driving 73 mph until I passed a 35-mph speed limit sign.) The owner may have done a little engine work, but like the ’76 it didn’t offer that much compared to earlier Vettes — 190 or 250 horsepower from the 350 V-8s.
For a variety of reasons, then, it has been almost 20 years since I’ve driven any Corvette. That personal losing streak of mine ended Sunday.
NOTE: Yes, this is the Corvette I drove. This is a 2014 Corvette convertible with the LT-1 V-8, which sends 450 horsepower and 450 lb.-ft. of torque through a proper seven-speed manual transmission. CorvSport adds:
The LT1 engine combines advanced technologies, including direct fuel injection, Active Fuel Management, continuously variable valve timing, and an advanced combustion system that delivers more power while using less fuel. In fact, during normal driving conditions, it is estimated that the new Corvette gets an approximate 26 miles per gallon (highway), thanks in part to the LT1’s ability to run in a fuel-saving V-4 mode while driving at cruising speeds.
The LT1 engine is backed by a choice of active exhaust systems that are less restrictive than the previous generation. This reduction in exhaust restriction was achieved by increasing the diameter of the pipes from 2.5 inches to 2.75 inches, which resulted in a 13-percent improvement in airflow through the standard system. Additionally, there is also an optional dual-mode active exhaust system which offers a 27-percent improvement in airflow. It features two additional valves that open to a lower-restriction path through the mufflers. When opened, these valves increase engine performance and produce a more powerful exhaust note.The LT1 engine is paired to an industry-exclusive TREMEC TR 6070 seven-speed manual transmission (standard) with Active Rev Matching for more precise upshifts and downshifts. This driver-selectable feature can be easily engaged or disengaged via paddles on the steering wheel. …
In addition, shift feel and shift points can be adjusted through the Driver Mode Selector – a five-position dial that tailors 12 vehicle attributes to fit the driver’s environment and produce one of several unique driving experiences.
The cockpit mounted Driver Mode Selector utilizes a rotary knob near the shifter that allows drivers to select between one of five drive settings: Weather, Eco, Tour, Sport, and Track. The Tour Mode is the default setting for everyday driving. The Weather Mode was designed primarily for added confidence while driving in rain and snow. The Eco Mode was developed for achieving optimal fuel economy. The Sport Mode was developed for drivers looking for a more adventurous, or “spirited” driving experience. The Track Mode was developed for a single reason – as it’s name implies – for running the car at a racetrack. …
For C7 Corvettes equipped with the Z51 Performance Package, it will be set up with 45-mm piston Bilstein dampers for more aggressive body control and track capability. The Z51 is available with the third-generation Magnetic Ride Control, which features a new twin-wire/dual-coil damper system that react 40 percent more efficiently, enabling improved ride comfort and body control.
The Corvette Stingray now rides on new 18x 8.5-inch front and 19 x 10-inch rear wheels. New Michelin Pilot Super Sport run-flat tires, which were developed specifically for the seventh-generation Corvette. These tires deliver comparable levels of grip with the previous generation of Corvette, despite having a narrow profile than their predecessors. Given the reduced “footprint”, the track-oriented Corvette Stingray, when equipped with the Z51 Performance Package, is capable of 1g in cornering acceleration – which is comparable to the performance of the 2013 Corvette Grand Sport.The Driver Mode Selector was in Sport, I believe. I didn’t drive it at, well, very much faster than legal speeds, though I did drive it the wrong way down a one-way street, smiling all the way. I didn’t drive that fast because it’s not my car, I wasn’t familiar with the area, and I didn’t want to do something stupid, like, say, hit the rear end of a manure spreader in a brand new Mustang convertible (really) or hit two houses and land on top of a parked car (really). Nevertheless, driving that Corvette made my week.
The owner is about my size, so the car fit me just fine. (Which is good, since Corvettes I’ve fit in have been tight fits, though perhaps at car shows the dealers don’t have the cars set up to have people screw around with seat adjustments.) And, yes, the driving experience was unparalleled, even though not very fast. The engine sounds as it should. The transmission is a little tall in first, and it’s easy to go from second to fifth because the gears are close together.
The nice thing about the Vette from the late C3 onward is that it’s now a usable car beyond just driving it. The convertibles have small trunks, but the coupes have hatchbacks suitable for overnight bags or golf bags, or a few groceries. Some Vette fans don’t like that, but how many people do nothing but drive a car without using it for something else? The owner claimed he got in the low 30s in highway mileage. You could not get low 30s in highway mileage if you disconneccted seven cylinders.
I have been a bit of a naysayer about the C7 and the C6 before it in part because of the end of the hidden headlights. (Europe’s fault, apparently. Brexit!) It’s also seemed to me that the car has gotten too complex for its audience. (The owner said the tires are not designed for weather colder than 40 degrees.) It is still an affordable supercar when compared with much more expensive European cars. And the driving experience is incomparable to any I’ve had, including the original Vettebeast. I may have to rethink my opinion of the C7.
Powerball is worth $122 million ($81.9 million cash value) Saturday night.
-
ESPN.com writes about a stadium I spent five years in but bears little resemblance to then, thanks to things like …
David Gilreath never planned on becoming a Wisconsin Badger. Instead, he arrived for a visit intent on reaffirming his commitment to Minnesota. The wide receiver prospect attended high school 12 miles from the Metrodome and hadn’t experienced a college game anywhere else.
Then, he witnessed the power of Camp Randall Stadium.
“You get a sense of what college football is supposed to be like as far as the fans,” said Gilreath, who found himself looking into the stands as much as he watched Wisconsin beat Penn State back in 2006. “Being out there, it was pretty crazy, seeing the Jump Around, seeing the wave they do, seeing the chants, how packed it was. I wasn’t used to that. I remember that being the main factor. That was one of the main factors of saying I’m going to Wisconsin — the stadium.”
So it was only fitting that four years later, Gilreath would be responsible for producing one of the most memorable and loudest plays in the stadium’s long history when he returned the opening kickoff 97 yards for a touchdown against No. 1 Ohio State. As the crowd of 81,194 erupted under the lights of a primetime matchup, the ground shook beneath Gilreath’s cleats. It felt, Gilreath said, like a movie starring the players. They rode that emotion to a 31-18 upset victory, and students stormed the field to share in the revelry with the team.
“I think it has to be one of the best atmospheres in college football,” Gilreath said. “This is a huge stage you’re on, and fans are right on top of you. It overwhelms the other players a little bit.”
The X’s and O’s are important. Camp Randall Stadium, however, could represent one of No. 8 Wisconsin’s biggest advantages when No. 2 Ohio State visits Saturday night (8 p.m. ET, ABC). The Badgers’ playoff dreams are at stake, and they’re listed as a 10.5-point underdog. But, as Gilreath or anyone else who has played there will tell you, don’t overlook the Camp Randall affect, particularly at night.
“It was pretty nuts for a 3:30 kick,” said Ohio State coach Urban Meyer, whose last visit there was a 2012 overtime victory. “It’s going to be loud — really loud.”
Camp Randall Stadium, the fourth-oldest facility in the FBS, provides a home-field advantage that is generally considered among the best in the country. Since the start of the 2004 season, Wisconsin has compiled a 75-9 record there (.893 winning percentage). Among Power 5 programs, only Ohio State (80-9, .899) has won a higher percentage of its home games in that time frame.
During big night games, when Camp Randall is the center of the nation’s attention as it will be Saturday, the place is notably manic. It’s so loud even Jim Harbaugh was speechless back when he played at Michigan. And with all due respect to Virginia Tech’s heavy metal entrance from Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” or Tennessee’s rendition of “Rocky Top,” nobody rocks like Wisconsin when “Jump Around” blares through the stereo system.
Come for the football, stay for the party and even walk home through a Civil War camp. When you say Wis-con-sin, you’ve said it all.
“There’s a game that’s labeled homecoming, but every game is a homecoming, I think, for people at Camp Randall,” said Matt Lepay, in his 23rd season as the Badgers’ football radio play-by-play announcer. “It’s a social gathering, and the fact the team has been pretty good more often than not makes it that much better. It’s more than a football game that gets people there.” …
Ryan Sondrup’s football career had ended prematurely because of an injury, and the former Badgers tight end began his last school year yearning for a way to fill the void. When he opted for a volunteer role with Wisconsin’s athletic marketing department in 1998, he couldn’t have known that search would spawn one of the great traditions in college football.
Sondrup, who spent three seasons on the team, believed part of the game-day experience felt stale and inquired with his bosses about how to enhance fan involvement. The response: Create a list of ideas and get back to us. Several concepts fell by the wayside, but one that seemed feasible to Sondrup was compiling a CD playlist to amp up the crowd.
One night at Wando’s, a popular downtown bar and grill, Sondrup and a few friends on the team began scrolling through the Jukebox. Up popped House of Pain’s 1992 hit “Jump Around,” a song with a high-energy introduction that encouraged everyone to — what else? — jump around.
Eyebrows raised, and the group shared a collective thought: Hey, this could be something.
“That was our big moment, our big momentum-building idea to get the student section raucous, so to speak,” Sondrup said.
Sondrup presented his playlist to Kevin Kluender, an assistant marketing director at Wisconsin. Earlier in the season, Kluender had been searching for the right entertainment combination before the fourth quarter began. The stadium featured a primitive message board with a student section race, the dots ticking frame-by-frame across the screen. Kluender would follow up by playing a random song.
But everything changed during Wisconsin’s only home night game that season on Oct. 10, 1998, against Purdue. Boilermakers quarterback Drew Brees was in the process of setting an NCAA passing record by completing 55 of 83 throws, and the game had begun to drag on. After the third quarter, Kluender scanned Sondrup’s playlist trying to liven up the fan base. He settled on “Jump Around.”
“My back was sort of to the student section a little bit,” Kluender said. “I could see that people are pointing and looking. I turned around and saw everyone jumping. It just kind of looked like popcorn. You had never seen anything like that.”
Added Sondrup: “Kevin cranked that on, and the place went nuts.”
The stadium shook and the press box swayed, infusing a new energy into Camp Randall. Wisconsin went on to win the game 31-24 on its way to a Rose Bowl appearance.
Kluender played the song during Wisconsin’s final two home games, but it wasn’t until the following season when he realized what a gem the school had on its hands. Even during nonconference blowouts against overmatched opponents, students stayed in their seats just so they could bob their heads and hop up and down to “Jump Around.”
Controversy briefly followed in 2003, when Richter, then the athletics director, asked for the song not to be played in the home opener against Akron because the stadium was under construction, and he feared the shaking could be dangerous. Outrage reached such high levels that Chancellor John D. Wiley was forced to step in. He announced “Jump Around” could be played the next week during a home game against UNLV after a study determined the building would remain structurally sound.
“Man, you should’ve seen the people when the song didn’t happen,” Richter said. “All of a sudden, boos. I got emails and letters from people saying, ‘It’s a right that we have.’ It didn’t take long for the administration to change it. I said, ‘This is a good way to leverage some of the profanity that will happen if you don’t play Jump Around.’ The administration decided to bite the bullet.”
In the years since, “Jump Around” has been cemented as a staple, alongside renditions of “Sweet Caroline” and “Build me up Buttercup.” It has quickly become considered one of the best traditions in college football, and Saturday will mark the 91st consecutive home game in which “Jump Around” is played, providing an energy jolt that is difficult to replicate elsewhere.
“You see other stadiums try to do it,” Sondrup said. “They’ll play ‘Jump Around,’ and you kind of laugh. To see the student section embrace it, I think it’s that energy of Camp Randall. They’re the ones that took it and ran with it and made it what it is. It’s just a great place to play.” …
Devotion is 40,000 fans braving bitter cold and a three-hour football game to stay for a 20-minute performance from the school’s band so they can participate in the largest Chicken Dance you’ve ever seen. Mike Leckrone has witnessed the madness, known as “The Fifth Quarter,” up close for decades as Wisconsin’s band director. Yet explaining the popularity of those postgame shows remains elusive.
“That’s part of the mystery of the Wisconsin fan,” Leckrone said. “We get all these people to do crazy things, and they’ve done it for years and years. I don’t know that they’ve ever been able to do anything quite like it anywhere else in the country. People have called me and said, ‘Tell me about this Fifth Quarter.’
“Wisconsin fans are very gregarious, and what we try to do is feed on that and give them some things back that they can pick up on and then have fun with us, too.”
Leckrone arrived in 1969 to serve as director of the school’s marching band and took over as director of the entire band in 1975 — a role he holds today at age 80. During the early years, the football team inspired little confidence while in the midst of a 20-game winless streak. On-campus protests during the Vietnam War meant few students were interested in wearing a uniform and marching military style. But Leckrone, whose childhood fantasy was to lead a Big Ten band down the field, never wavered in his enthusiasm while leading postgame shows despite minimal interest.
Curiosity started to pique during a famous 1978 home football game against Oregon. The band had begun rotating through a series of commercial jingles, including the Budweiser tune, “Here Comes the King,” with a style imitative of a typical German band. Leckrone seized on the opportunity after fans previously showed great interest in the Beer Barrel Polka. With the help of his band, Leckrone convinced students to change the lyrics from “When you say Budweiser, you’ve said it all,” to “When you say Wisconsin, you’ve said it all.”
During that Oregon game, he played the song on multiple occasions and worked the crowd into a fervor, which coincided with a Wisconsin comeback victory. The song became such a hit that the upper deck of Camp Randall Stadium swayed when it was played, prompting then-athletics director Elroy Hirsch to tell Leckrone not to play the song during games.
Instead, Leckrone had the public address speaker make an announcement that it would not be played until five minutes after the game had completed to allow concerned fans to exit, intentionally making a big fuss to spotlight his band’s postgame show. The momentum for the song led local sports writer Glenn Miller to dub the performance “The Fifth Quarter” — a name that has stuck ever since. The shows became so popular in lean football seasons that Leckrone noted more fans arrived at the end of the game than during.
“What Mike has done there through the years means a lot to people with the game-day experience,” said Lepay, the longtime radio announcer. “When you see the band, you see they’re having a good time. They’re getting involved. The fans see that, they know that, and they like to have a lot of fun with it.”
Leckrone has continued to find ways to entertain fans over the years, expanding the band’s repertoire. He incorporated the “Chicken Dance” after the school’s crew coach, Randy Jablonic, returned from a trip to Europe and suggested Leckrone play it at games. In the 1980s, several of his band members began mimicking Pee Wee Herman’s “Tequila Dance,” and the song quickly found its way into the postgame performance. His biggest failure, he said, was a rendition of the Macarena that students booed because they were fatigued of its popularity in the 1990s.
Did someone say “Tequila”? I was there for that:
His biggest failure, he said, was a rendition of the Macarena that students booed because they were fatigued of its popularity in the 1990s.
While Leckrone can’t fully express why the band’s performance has become so important to fans, its role in enhancing the game-day atmosphere has proven to be nearly as vital as the actual game.
“We have about 20 minutes of solid stuff that is just foolishness in a lot of ways,” Leckrone said. “But it’s fun stuff.”
The party pulls into town again Saturday for a top-10 battle with playoff implications, and football will only be half the fun. Welcome to Camp Randall Stadium.
-
The number one song today in 1957 was the Everly Brothers’ first number one:
The number one British single today in 1960 was a song originally written in German sung by an American:
The number one album today in 1967 is about an event that supposedly took place on my birthday:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 